


Monsters In The Dark

by Memories_of_the_Shadows



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Dark, F/M, Stream of Consciousness, light - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-16
Updated: 2010-01-16
Packaged: 2019-03-03 11:25:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13340265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Memories_of_the_Shadows/pseuds/Memories_of_the_Shadows
Summary: A look at monsters and predators, dark and light, and two boys who understand the same things in very different ways.





	Monsters In The Dark

**Author's Note:**

> This is probably my most popular fic, and very stream of consciousness. The first bit of the first line came from "Pitch Black" and the rest followed from there. It was translated into french and that version is still on ff.net. Link at the bottom.

In the dark is where the predators hide. All wise men knew that, and all children were wise.

That was why a scared little boy resolved that he wouldn't be a fool, but that he also wouldn't be afraid anymore. He'd be a predator because predators didn't fear—they were fear incarnate, and all others shivered in their beds for fear of them.

His logic was fallacious, but it let him sleep—that night, and every other night—it let him sleep without nightmares.

\/\'/\/'\/\'/\/

About fifty years later, a similar little boy sat in the darkness; his green eyes eminently adjusted to it after years of seeing it. He wasn't afraid of it, or what lay in it, because this little boy already knew that monsters could just as easily hide in the light as the dark.

The monsters in the light scared this little boy far more than the monsters in the dark. The monsters in the dark were familiar, and even friendly.

All the little spiders with their gleaming eight eyes were companions when no one else would be. The occasional skittering rat was an oddity that relieved the boredom and occasionally gave him the slightest warmth when they curled into his meager bed with him. The bats he saw when he was locked outside only made his mouth curl up in an odd way.

This boy knew that there were more monsters that lived in the dark, but he didn't think that he could be scared by them either. As with the monsters in the dark that he already knew, they would probably leave him alone if he left them alone.

Not so with the monsters in the daytime. He wanted nothing more than to be ignored by them, but no matter how hard he tried to be invisible, he never was invisible.

He was no predator, but he was still of the dark; inextricably part of it—bound by it in blood, bone, and tears. He was born to it, bred to it; and anyone who thought that they could become part of the dark without such a birth, without that breeding, was more of a fool than those who did not rightly fear the dark.

\/\'/\/'\/\'/\/

The boy had grown up, and seen nightmares that would terrify the normal soul. But to him, it was still the monsters in the light, and always would be. Only now it was increasingly hard to recognize them.

People who manipulated, who pulled at his very being, who did not know how to let go. And a monster, a monster who liked to pretend that he was a creature of the dark, but was no such thing. A simple snake, while terrifying, held nothing to the dark. Snakes worshipped the sun, couldn't survive in the cold of the night. What that boy from so long ago hadn't realized was that not all predators were of the dark. But this boy knew that intimately.

There was only one person who seemed to realize what he did, that not all that lived in the dark was bad, and that not all that lived in the light was good. A girl who was like the moon in looks and name, but as one cursed by the sun in speech and manner. She spoke nonsense, but the boy could always understand what she meant.

All the others feared or worshipped the dark and the snake as if they were one in the same, and loved or hated the light and grand manipulator as though they could harbor no evil.

But this boy knew different, just as he knew that he didn't really love the girl with red hair no matter what his body told him; just as he knew that the Greater Good didn't include his good; just as he knew that his soul would forever belong to the dark little space with the gleaming eyes of spiders, and skittering rats. Or those moonlit nights where the bats and owls swooped over his head and it was just him and the monsters of the night; safe from the daytime monsters.

It wasn't his choice to be on that train station to the great beyond, it wasn't his choice to let the snake-baby die cruelly, it wasn't his choice to marry the girl with red hair whom he did not love.

Yet, at the very end, it was his choice to die as he did.

He lay in a small dark room, with the gleaming eyes of spiders, and a cat—for he no longer cared much for rats—warming his side. A letter was clutched to his chest which could only be read by two people: the son who understood and his moon-girl. He lay there in the dark, with a smile on his face, and then he passed away.

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally posted on 16 January 2010 on ff.net. I am the original author and am reposting it here. This is a product of my writing abilities at the time. Link to the French translation is [here](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/6200736/1/Monsters-in-the-dark), many thanks to Rikka Yomi for translating it.


End file.
